Prison abolition

Prison abolition is a movement that, in contrast to prison reform, seeks to abolish prisons as an institution.^[1]

Instead of viewing the violence, discrimination, and other harms caused by prisons as an aberration, abolitionists believe that these factors are inherent in the system itself and cannot be fixed with reforms.^[2][3] Based on new evidence, several abolitionists have argued that "much of what reformists claim is wrong with the criminal punishment system—such as high rates of recidivism, severe racial disparities, and extreme obstacles to reintegration—is in fact intrinsic to the logic of how it is intended to work and that it is inherently and purposively stacked against the interests of the poor, minorities, and marginalized groups".^[2] Arguments in favor of prison abolition include its high financial cost, impact on families, and the suffering inflicted on prisoners.^[4] Activists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and James Kilgore explain that their abolitionist convictions are derived from years of working in and observing prisons.^[5] One argues that it's their "basic moral orientation that human beings should not be kept in cages".^[2] Abolitionists challenge all of the conventional justifications for imprisonment, citing lack of evidence for the effect of prison on incapacitating, deterring, or rehabilitating offenders, that prison improves public safety and reduces crime.^[2][3][1] They argue that the harms from crime can be addressed in other ways, ranging from wide-ranging societal reform to eliminate many of the causes of crime, to restorative justice.^[1][6] Prison abolition is often described as utopian, both in a positive and negative sense.^[7][1]

Imprisonment as punishment for a crime has not changed radically in hundreds of years, so some people are arguing it needs to be rethought in the twenty-first century.^[4] Despite enjoying a small following in academic circles for several decades, prison abolition was never a mainstream position before the twenty-first century.^[4] The criticism of abolition is that it is "naïve idealism" due to the lack "of any practical alternatives to prison",^[4] others feel it diverts attention away from reform efforts that have a greater chance of success.^[1][8] Thomas Ward Frampton cites the most common argument against abolitionism as what to do with the small number of prisoners who present the most danger to society; abolitionists do not have a unified answer to this problem.^[1] Some people and organizations support decarceration while opposing abolitionism, contending that reforms could reduce the prison population by half or up to 90 percent with no impact on public safety.^[1] Others argue that most dangerous offenders are not prevented from committing crimes despite mass incarceration, citing low crime clearance rates, disagreement about which actions are most harmful to society, and the number of violent crimes committed by prisoners against each other.^[1]

In the 1970s, the prison abolition movement was more popular in Europe compared to police abolition.^[9] Prison abolition also was somewhat popular in the United States at the same time, with some experts at the time viewing the eventual abolition of prison as inevitable.^[1]

Although reforms have targeted conditions of imprisonment on human rights grounds, as well as some penal practices such as life imprisonment without the prospect of parole, arbitrary detention, and pretrial detention, imprisonment itself and the length of sentences has largely escaped scrutiny on human rights grounds. This is despite similar evidence for the harms of imprisonment compared to recognized forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and torture.^[10][11][12] The lack of attention to prison as a human rights problem has been criticized by some scholars, citing its disproportionate impact on poor and marginalized people.^[13]

Notable supporters of prison abolition include Howard Zinn^[14] and Angela Davis.^[15]

• Cakal, Ergün (2023). "Torture and progress, past and promised: problematising torture's evolving interpretation". International Journal of Law in Context. 19 (2): 236–254. doi:10.1017/S1744552323000010. ISSN 1744-5523.
• Oette, Lutz (2024). The Transformation of the Prohibition of Torture in International Law. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-888577-1.